Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Secretary Tom Jose has called a secretary-level meeting of soc-ial justice and general education departments on Thursday to address the long-standing deman-ds of 25, 000 special needs students and 6,000 teachers, including therapists and non-teaching staff.
The special schools associations are concerned that the LDF government has ignored their demands. The special schools observed a token strike on the school re-opening day on June 6. Though the finance department sanctioned `11.2 crore to the special schools for three months’ operations during January - March, it has not yet been released.
Higher education secretary A. Shahjahan wants to shift special needs students of mild and moderate categories to normal schools. But the office-bearers of the Associ-ation for Intellectually Disabled (AID) feel that the parents should take a call on the issue.
“The LDF government wants to provide special privileges to 1,000 mainstream schools so that special needs students can be accommodated there. Huge expenses would have to be incurred by appointing special needs teachers, therapists and teaching assistants. Why can’t the government do something for the existing special schools,” said an office-bearer of AID.
Social justice department special secretary Biju Prabhakar has proposed to upgrade 250 schools for special needs students affected with cerebral palsy, autism and mentally challenged. The AID has decided to go on an indefinite fast before the secretariat if the government does not address their demands.
A decision on changing the account head of the higher education department to social justice department may be taken at the meeting on Thursday, enabling the transfer of `11.2 crore to 150 special schools.
